Colorado has been a terrific place for us to grow up in. While the overall quality of life has been a big selling point, our industrial attractiveness has really spurred our growth. Having the largest Federal workforce presence outside of Washington DC than any other state certainly helped, but the Feds came here for a reason, too. But Colorado had always, until 2018, boasted a balanced government in state and local levels that helped keep us on that good trajectory. Look at what is happening now? No, seriously: Look at the stats; look at the data; look at the rest of the country that is beginning to accelerate past Colorado. At what point do we acknowledge that our great, imbalanced experimental wave of left-tilted ideas and resulting legislation is a serious problem that the 2020 election may not come fast enough to fix? As the wave of recall petitions circulate out there, think very, very carefully about them before writing them off as just a “Republican” move. But why take my word for it? Look at the latest CNBC “Best States for Business” rankings that have now been released for 2019. I have, and have now also looked at several prior years of that data to see if any trends are emerging.
For sake of breaking this up into macro categories, let’s look at 3 groupings: 2011-2016; 2017-2018; and 2019 (post the midterms, and the Colorado seismic shift in balance of power). This ranking illustrates where Colorado is in relation to the rest of the nation. Top rank is 1, bottom is 50, in case that was not clear:
| 2011-2016 | 2017-2018 | 2019 | |
| Economy (avg) Colorado was ranked #2 and #3 in 2015, 2016, respectively | 13th | 10th | 21st |
| Cost of doing business (avg) | 36th | 38th | 37th |
| Quality of life (avg) | 11th | 12th | 7th |
| Education (avg) | 25th | 12th | 17th |
| Cost of living (avg) | 33rd | 33rd | 34th |
| Unemployment (avg) 2015-2016 unemployment did dip to 3.4% at its lowest, trending downward | 5.2% | 2.6% | 3.2% |
| Overall State Ranking | 6th | 6th | 9th |
What are take-aways to consider within this data? Several things to ponder (as many of you will pour into the numbers to also reach your own conclusions, which is fine and only fair):
- Colorado is seeing an upward trend in taxation at both business and personal levels. The Tabor Tax Law attacks currently happening in state government are exacerbating this problem, as the new state government is trying hard to find money to pay for its new programs. Ironically, it has posed a major, credible threat to over 1 billion dollars of tax revenues by attacking oil and gas with the legislation they passed (after we all voted it down last November, remember?). Most of that money went to education; the full day kindergarten law that our new governor has enacted now needs to kill our tax limitation laws so he can get the money to pay for it. Oh, the circle of life…
- Other states, whether we Coloradoans like it or not, are embracing the new President and his policies, instead of trying to find ways to resist, and they are benefitting significantly as a result. New industries are moving back to the states from abroad, after the regulatory and tax relaxation. This has made the US more competitive, and not because of Obama, and not by not “filling the pockets of the rich” (industry is owned by the rich and their shareholders, like all of us with 401Ks… get over that argument): Colorado is working to attract zero of these. Seriously, zero. Domestically, Colorado has lately ranked a distant 4th (or worse) in the Amazon HQ2 bid, but that isn’t over yet.
- We improved on education rankings steadily over the last several years, until 2019, where we have been passed by several states.
- Our unemployment rate is ticking north again. We are one of the few states where this is happening, as is illustrated by month after month of glowing job creation reports (a totally unexpected 224,000 new jobs in June), and historically (all time) low Black, Hispanic, and Female unemployment rates. Not to mention wage growth now topping 3.6% for the first time in over 10 years, and a GDP in the high 3%, sometimes over 4% range (Obama’s last year average was between 1.6% and 1.9%, depending on the source).
- Colorado has slipped 50% in our overall ranking in just 2019. While our quality of life has improved in ranking, our high cost of living, unattractive business climate, questionable taxation policies, and highly unpredictable new government has made Colorado a quickly declining former star in the eyes of industry.
Why do we see shifts in Colorado in the first place, when compared to the other 50 states? While this is a complicated question, let me pose a few hypotheses to consider:
- In the first category, 2011-2016, Colorado had a balanced, pro-business government. Governor Hickenlooper, a democrat, was also a businessman. While some of his views I personally didn’t agree with, his overall approach did generally favor energy, agriculture, and technology.
- In the second category we still had Hickenlooper, but it was also the first half of the “evil” Trump administration. Now, while many of you have a visceral response (even seizures) when hearing his name, keep in mind that he eliminated over 60,000 growth-killing regulations that were on the books (so far), cut corporate and personal taxes (no, not just to the rich – I got a cut, too… I am not rich, so stop that thought before it leaves your brain and lands on the keyboard), yet the economy has not tanked (just the massive opposite), we are not in WWIII, we are now the largest oil producer in the world, and the environment has not become a chemical and nuclear wasteland.
- In the last category what has changed is a huge shift in Colorado overall business-friendliness with the sweep in the knee-jerk 2018 midterm elections on the state level. The election of Californian (Colorado by birth only) Polis and the hostile take-over of legislative and county and local offices have tipped our balance so hard and so fast that even Reuters has called out Colorado as seeing an incredibly rapid “chilling” in state investment attractiveness by not just energy, but also several other industries.
So, we will all read what we want from the numbers, but the facts remain that Colorado has some self-created issues, and many of these have arisen in the last 30 months, and accelerated in the last 6 months. In the meantime, states like Utah, Nebraska, North Carolina and several others are seeing an opportunity to pass Colorado and grow their state economically, which (by the way) fuels and funds growth socially. Think about that if you walk past a recall petition in the next 60 days. Think about what balance does, and stop worrying about how to take down the “evil orange monster” in Washington. It’s not doing any of us in Colorado any favors.
